Conservative commentator, ethicist, and former Secretary of Education and "Anti-drug Czar" Bill Bennett is well on his way to cornering the market on a peculiar form of public offense, that of doing something that is objectively without ethical flaw, but that nonetheless attracts condemnation and controversy both from those who thoughtlessly misunderstand his actions and those who quite willfully misrepresent them. The previously most celebrated, you may recall, was Bennett's fondness for playing the slot machines at Las Vegas casinos, a form of legal recreation that apparently cost him millions of dollars over a period of years. Bennett, the best-selling author of The Book of Virtues, was widely derided as a hypocrite by liberal talking heads and columnists, though none of his attackers ever were able to explain why expending money one can unquestionably afford on legal gambling was unethical, or more deserving of criticism than the equally costly hobbies of more liberal celebrities, like operating jet planes (John Travolta), racing cars (Paul Newman), or collecting motorcycles (Jay Leno).

The latest of Bennett's self-inflicted PR wounds occurred on his syndicated radio talk show, when he countered a caller's suggestion that a good argument for ending abortion would be that such a policy would have the salutary effect of fixing the Social Security system (as there would be eventually be more Americans paying into it.) Bennett opined that such scenarios were dubious at best, citing as an example that one could just as logically advocate the abortion of all African-American infants because it would lower the crime rate. He also immediately noted the obvious, that such a policy would be 'impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible."

But that didn't stop the predictable barrage of abuse subsequently aimed at Bennett. Leading the mob were the liberal blogs, many publishing the equivalent of this post from a blog called "McGeek"…

William Bennett says that we should abort every black baby to reduce the crime rate. I thought Republicans were against abortion?

The fact that this bears no resemblance to the intent, context or meaning of what Bennett really said to his caller didn't stop "McGeek's" author from writing this slanderous statement, any more than it stopped Bruce Gordon, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Nancy Pelosi, leader of House Democrats, from saying Bennett's remark was "racist," or Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean from calling it "hateful." But while the blogosphere's distorted version of what Bennett said is undoubtedly racist, what Bennett actually did say is neither racist, wrong, nor even inappropriate in a philosophical debate in a free society.

To begin with, Bennett's statement ("If you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do.") is true. There were other perhaps less inflammatory ways of making the same point ("If you wanted to destroy the rap music industry…", "If you wanted to wipe out the National Basketball Association…", "If you wanted to reduce the country's rate of out-of-wedlock births," and so on), as well as ways to make the same point using a similarly absurd non-racial example ("If you wanted to wipe out the Women's National Basketball Association…", "If you wanted to reduce the country's rate of out-of-lock births," you could abort every female baby in the country…), but the first part of Bennett's statement is statistically beyond reproach, and the second part is undeniable. Black Americans, for complex socio-economic reasons that Bennett is well-aware of but that had nothing to do with his point, have a significantly higher crime rate than the population at large. As Bennett said, if one's only objective was to reduce the crime rate, and one did not care about the other consequences of one's "solution," a national policy of aborting every black baby would "work"; that is, it would lower the national crime rate. Bennett, an ethicist, created a classic "the ends justify the means" analogy to show the flaw in the argument posited by his caller, which was that the U.S. could strengthen Social Security by banning abortion.

Now, Bennett isn't in a philosophy class when he is waxing theoretical on ethical issues in the jungles of talk radio, and he must bear responsibility for the fact that using loaded hypotheticals that are the stuff of intellectual hard-ball in today's politically over-heated "gotcha!" environment is the equivalent of putting on a deer suit in hunting season and going for a jaunt in the woods. Under the circumstances, it was a stupid thing to say and a dumb way to say it. But young women who go walking alone down dark city alleys late at night are also doing something stupid, and yet that does not justify the hoodlums who may rob or rape them.

The democrats, liberals, Bennett detractors and racial grievance collectors who are now taking pains to mischaracterize Bennett's comments as hate and racism need to be viewed in a proper light. They (or at least those of them who are minimally astute enough to understand the intent of Bennett's comments) are not merely race-baiting, but also fear-mongering, with the intent of implanting a lingering suspicion in the minds of African-Americans that some conservatives and Republicans favor genocide. This was the subtext of the some of the media's suggestions that hurricane rescue efforts were held back because so many of the victims were black, and the attacks on Bennett represent an even more direct attempt to exacerbate racial divisions in America for political gain. Is this unethical? It would be difficult to imagine anything more unethical.

Bennett, for his part, must be held responsible for recklessly dangling raw meat over the shark tank, but his refusal to apologize for his comments is both proper and necessary to ensure that political-correctness doesn't continue its relentless encroachment on the free expression of ideas in America. One of the protections our First Amendment provides us is the freedom to express legitimate ideas inexactly, clumsily or undiplomatically, which is what Bill Bennett did on his radio show. It was not his finest moment, but it was neither hateful, racist, nor unethical.

The attacks on him, however, are all three.